


A Slight Detour

by Ray_Writes



Series: Tumblr Prompts [13]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 20:40:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13819032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ray_Writes/pseuds/Ray_Writes
Summary: The Doctor and Donna take a drive.





	A Slight Detour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Basmathgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basmathgirl/gifts).



> This fic was written based off [a photo](http://basmathgirl.tumblr.com/post/171158346503) that the genius Basmathgirl found and then prompted me to write something about when I expressed an interest. I hope you enjoy!

“You rented a  _ car _ ?”

“I did, yes.” The Doctor nodded to the vehicle in question, a big vintage one in a blue that hurt the eyes to look at for too long.

Donna continued to stare anyway. “What for?”

“I thought we could take it out for a spin. You always say we never get to see the sights.”

“So you went and rented a car. And — is that a basket? What, are we doing a picnic now?”

“Maybe?” He was rubbing at the back of his neck. “We don’t have to. I just thought it’d be nice.”

That wasn’t the first time he’d said that in recent memory. It seemed like a lot of their trips were being geared towards nice places, lovely sights, and pleasant company. At least until they inevitably found trouble.

But it was like he’d been going out of his way lately to find these places. Ever since that trip to the 1920s...which was probably best not to dwell on, considering what had happened between them there. She was sure he’d put it out of his mind already, even if things had seemed  _ different _ since then. And now this!

She’d been suspicious, of course, when he’d practically been bouncing in his seat at breakfast that morning. That had only grown when he’d suggested she might want to stop by the wardrobe room before they disembarked for the day.

The TARDIS had helpfully laid something out for her that wouldn’t have looked out of place on her Gran in some of the very old photo albums of her and Gramps in their youth. Donna had turned this way and that in front of the mirror, watching the pale blue skirt fan out. Things were not as billowy up top.

“The 50s really were the heyday of curvy girls,” she’d noted to herself while eying the scoop neckline. “Look, have you got something a little less showy up here?”

The TARDIS hadn’t even given so much as a hum in reply.

“Oh, thanks.”

She’d decided to just head out to the console room. If Spaceman hadn’t wanted to get an eyeful of her cleavage today he shouldn’t have recommended his finicky ship.

But he hadn’t been in the console room. “Doctor!” Donna had called.

A horn had honked outside in reply, and she’d stepped out of the doors to find him and their borrowed transport for the day.

“What do you think?” He’d asked. Which had led them to here.

What  _ did _ she think? Aside from being totally surprised. He’d gone to all this effort to give her a quiet little trip just the two of them. As much as she enjoyed meeting people from other places and times, she had to admit the idea had some merits.

And a picnic lunch. She’d always wanted to do one of those. Admittedly, whenever she’d pictured it, it had always been as a date. Which this certainly wasn’t. Best friends went and rented cars to just take their best friend out for a picnic all the time. Right?

The trouble was, she wasn’t entirely sure what they were anymore. That’s what happened when you snogged your mate.

Oh, what the hell. It wasn’t as if she was about to go hiking in these heels.

“Go on, then,” Donna said at last.

He beamed at her, taking her arm to lead her around to the passenger door which he opened for her. When he didn’t immediately shut it behind her, she turned in her seat to look at him just as his eyes jumped up to her face.

“You, um, you look lovely,” he said.

“You’ve said that before,” she reminded him, then winced. 1920s. So much for not thinking about it.

“Well, you were lovely then, too.”

She shook her head and reached for the door, but he placed his hand on hers. Her usual rebuke got stuck somewhere in her throat when she made the mistake of looking into his eyes.

“Really, Donna, you’re beautiful.”

Donna felt her cheeks warm under that sincere brown-eyed gaze. “Shall we get a move on?” She managed eventually.

“We shall,” he agreed, finally going back round the car to his side.

He really had picked a nice spot for a drive. The sun was out but warm rather than blazing, there was a light breeze, and the countryside was uninterrupted apart from the odd house here and there. She ought to have brought a camera to show Gramps. As long as no aliens cropped up, it would’ve even been safe to let her mum see.

They drove along winding roads with the windows down, chatting about practically anything the way they usually did. He’d been right, of course, this was nice. Like something out of a daydream, the ones she’d been having lately despite her best efforts.

Donna tried refocusing on something, anything else. She looked down as he shifted gears again, and then it hit her: Spaceman could drive.

“You’re not half bad at this,” she remarked out loud.

“Well, thank you.”

“But they can’t have had cars like this where you came from. When did you learn to drive?”

“Oh, it was ages ago. I don’t usually have a reason to put it to use. I did own a car back when I was with UNIT,” he told her. “She was a real vintage, though. Bright yellow.”

“What, like Noddy?” She couldn’t help asking.

“What is it about you and Noddy? Do you want to go visit Enid?” He glanced to her and grinned back when he noticed her teasing smile. “Hadn’t thought about Bessie in a while—”

“ _ Bessie _ ? Oh my God, did you name your car?”

“Well, why not?”

Donna was too busy laughing to answer.

“Donna,” said Spaceman.

“No, go on, I’m sorry,” she replied, not very sorry at all.

He shook his head but continued, “Hadn’t thought about her — I can hear you giggling, you know.”

Donna took her hand away from her mouth where she’d been trying to muffle the sound. “Sorry, I just had the thought, the Old Girl ought to count herself lucky!” She fell about laughing again, unable to help herself. Donna had used to hate how obnoxious her laugh sounded, but it didn’t seem to matter as much around the Doctor. He never thought her odd or unappealing for it.

Even now, he was smiling as he attempted to cajole her. “ _ Donna _ .” He passed her a handkerchief to dab at her eyes where tears had started to leak out of the corners.

Donna took a deep, calming breath. “Okay, you hadn’t thought about  _ Bessie _ in a while, till we were chasing down Agatha, I suppose?”

“That’s right,” he confirmed, looking glad to be back on track. “That was good fun, wasn’t it? Apart from the murders, I mean.”

“Yeah, it’d be good to avoid those today.”

“Exactly, that was the plan. Just sort of pick up where we left off.”

He was staring straight ahead out the windshield, but there was something almost carefully casual about how he’d said it. Where exactly did he feel they’d left off? Not the actual drive to rescue Agatha, surely. Perhaps them simply arriving at the party out on the lawn, before things had gone sideways.

Unbidden, the memory of his heated gaze on her after the kiss rose to the forefront of her mind. But he couldn’t mean that. He’d even said he meant the detox about ever doing that again. Not her.

It didn’t matter that there was a picnic basket for two sitting in the footwell of the backseat, or that it was his handkerchief she was currently twisting around her fingers, or that just the recollection of that searing look sent a shiver of something down her spine. Excitement or fear, she didn’t know, but it had kept her up nights on the TARDIS ever since.

Donna cast about for the first thing she could say in diversion. “Why didn’t you just travel in the TARDIS when you were with UNIT?”

“I couldn’t exactly use her at the time,” he replied, which had Donna raising her eyebrows. “And anyway, it was easier not to for short trips like that. Some farmer would report seeing strange lights in the woods and we’d drive out from HQ, that sort of thing.”

Donna felt a bit relieved at that. So cars to him were just transport, a work thing. He probably didn’t even see the romantic implications of a ride out alone in the middle of nowhere.

“So you’ve never taken a pretty girl out for a drive just because?” She checked, if only for her own curiosity.

“Well, I believe that’s what I’m doing right now,” he replied far too smoothly for a man who was supposed to have just meant the detox.

Donna scoffed. Alright, now he had to be pulling her leg. Probably all smug she was getting worked up over nothing. “Yeah, well we’re not about to get up to any mischief in the backseat.”

Immediately she winced. Why had she even brought it up? There wasn’t any reason to bring it up. Now he might think she’d been thinking about it or something, and then what would he think?

All he did, however, was turn to her with his face all scrunched up in that manner that meant he wasn’t following. “Mischief?”

Oh, he was  _ kidding _ . “You know,” she said with a pointed look.

“No, I don’t. What sort of mischief can you get up to sitting in the back?” He glanced behind them as if to check for such mischief. “There’s not even a gear shift.”

“Yeah, it’s less to do with sitting and more with lying down, Time Boy.”

“What, across the seats? I’m not sure we’d even fit,” he mused.

“Oi.” Donna’s eyes narrowed. “And just how do you know that?”

“Just an estimate. We could always test it, though,” the Doctor added, already turning them off of the road. He pulled them up alongside a fence made out of wooden posts and had barely shut off the car before he was hopping out.

Donna sat there a moment or two, needing the time to accept the fact that he actually wanted to do this. This was mental.

It took one of his customary calls of “Donna!” to get her moving.

When she finally got out of the car and went around, she was met with his trainers sticking out of the open door.

“See, I thought so. I’m too tall.” He shook his feet for extra emphasis, and Donna felt fairly certain he was probably wiggling his toes as well.

“Right, well, now we know.”

“So how exactly does this constitute mischief? You said we’re both supposed to be back here?”

“You really want to know?” She asked, despite already knowing the answer. He couldn’t stand not knowing things.

Sure enough, he gave a cheery, “Yep!”

Donna wasn’t about to actually go through with it. That wouldn’t be stretching the bounds of their friendship; that would be shattering it. Just a hint ought to be enough for a genius like him.

She placed a knee on the seat between his legs and leaned in, then gripped the headrest to keep herself balanced.

“So you’ve got two people and a horizontal surface. You do the maths.”

Donna meant to get right out and leave him to it, only when she shifted backwards her head knocked against the very low, very hard ceiling.

The following events all happened very fast.

“Ow!” Donna took her hand off the headrest, causing her to pitch forward, landing with a yelp from Spaceman underneath her. His legs jerked, one foot connecting with the door which swung out and then back in with the momentum before closing on them with a slam.

She buried her face in the nearest hiding place with a groan. “Seriously?”

Of course, that hiding place was the Doctor’s chest. Which was ridiculously comfy now that she had the chance to reflect on it. His hands went up to cradle her head, fingers threading through her hair with light touches. “Are you alright?”

It took her a long moment to realize that he was checking for a bump and not giving her an impromptu massage. Donna felt her cheeks heat up all over again.

“Uh, yeah, fine.”

Her mortification only grew as she took further stock of their situation.

She was straddling his thigh. Spaceman’s thigh. How had she let it get there? His legs were bent at awkward angles, which was causing the skirt of her dress to ride up past her knees. Donna didn’t think he could see that from his prone position.

But as she lifted her head from his chest and glanced down, she realized she was giving him a different view entirely.

“Donna,” the Doctor said as she shifted to bring her arms up. She paused, but he didn’t appear to have thought far enough ahead to the end of that sentence. His eyes were very wide and panicky. “Um.”

“Just keep those eyes on the ceiling, Time Boy,” she advised, far less stern than she might have ordinarily managed due to her embarrassment.

“Oh,” he realized, voice very quiet. She could feel his swallow as he did as ordered and Donna began to work tugging at the neckline of her dress.

She had to shuffle about a bit, doing a sort of wriggling maneuver to free up enough of the fabric on either side to make incremental gains. It’d be easier going if this didn’t involve her becoming well-acquainted with the very solid, very lean leg pressed between her own. Somehow the fact that it, well, felt rather good was not helping at all either. Was it her imagination or were the muscles in his leg tensing? Her breath was coming out in short puffs and gasps, and it was growing uncomfortably hot in the cramped space.

“Donna,” said the Doctor again, more urgently this time.

“What?” She snapped.

“It would be incredibly helpful if you could move around a bit less.”

“Oh, would it?” She gave a particularly exaggerated rock to one side just to spite him — then froze.

A choked sort of noise escaped him before he could slap a hand over his mouth, but it hardly mattered when she could  _ feel _ the unmistakable stiffness poking into her thigh.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. It was a precarious moment, frozen between discovery and realization.

Was he really…?

The doubt rolled in, though Donna thought it more likely to be cold rationality. She was a warm body getting up close and personal with sensitive bits. Any bloke would have reacted, even an alien one. It was the situation, not her.

If anything, he was likely to be cross with her once he got over his embarrassment. “Doctor, I’m sorry,” said Donna, wanting to make amends as quickly as possible.

His eyes squeezed shut and his hand moved away from his mouth allowing him to speak. “Of course you are. Oh, this was not the plan at all.”

Donna paused, this time in the middle of trying to untangle their feet. “What plan?”

There was a red flush creeping up his neck and into his cheeks. “The drive, the picnic. Trying to- to pick up where we left off.”

“Hold on.” It felt as though the entire universe had undergone a seismic shift, and Donna had to know, “Is this a date?”

“If you want it to be,” he said on a miserable sounding sigh. The Doctor cracked an eye open to meet her gobsmacked expression. “Look, Donna, just sit up, and I’ll drive us back, and we can pretend the whole thing never happened. Alright?”

But she couldn’t reply.  _ She hadn’t sat up. _ The one sure way of avoiding this entire mess, and what had she done? Pretty much the exact opposite. God, she really had lost her head over him.

She dropped it back down to rest on his chest again as a snort escaped her, then a giggle.

“Donna?”

“We are so daft,” she managed breathlessly.

“We are?” He asked, sounding absolutely confused and a tiny bit scared. 

Donna felt herself smile. She lifted her hands to his shoulders and used that hold to drag herself up the length of his body, which undid about all the work she’d put in to preserve her modesty. A fissure of excitement went through her upon noting that his interest down there didn’t seem to have flagged in the slightest.

“You do the maths yet?”

“Maths?”

Bless, she might have broken him.

“Yeah. You, me, a horizontal surface.” She thought she saw the answer spark in his eyes the second before she kissed him.

God, it felt like ages since the last one. Or the first one, really, but Donna wasn’t too bothered with the particulars while her lips moved against his. She should have realized he’d be better without a million other things stuffed in his mouth, but she hadn’t realized  _ how _ much better. And that tongue…

One or both of them let out a moan. His arms had wrapped around her and there was no space between them at all. She felt at once a desperate hunger for more and yet totally at peace, knowing this was exactly where she wanted to be.

His legs had relaxed out of their bent posture, but to properly stretch them out the Doctor stuck them out the open side window. Her own feet went with them due to the tangle of their legs. She was tempted to kick her heels off to enjoy the warm afternoon sunshine.

“Donna,” the Doctor murmured in the scant space between kisses. “My Donna.”

Her hands cradled his face then dove into his hair, anywhere she could reach. She was dizzy with the knowledge that this was her Spaceman, and he wanted her the same way she’d grown to want him. It was an absolute perfect moment.

A loud honk startled them both, and Donna darted up just in time to catch the driver of a passing lorry throw them a jaunty wave. She immediately dropped back down.

“Oh, my God.” How had she forgotten they were just off the side of a public road?

“Ah, well, suppose that looked…” Spaceman trailed off, one of his hands rising to tug at his ear. Today was just full of humiliation, wasn’t it? “Perhaps finding somewhere more private would be a good idea?”

“Yes, please, that’d be lovely.”

“Brilliant.”

She turned her face to see his grin, which she swore was infectious. A chuckle left him, and her smile only grew as he bent his head at an angle to kiss her cheek. Donna couldn’t help chasing his lips with her own, feet kicking up into the air.

It took them far longer than necessary to get back on the road.


End file.
